“Building governance in Portugal : some reflections upon the digital cities and regions program”

The purpose of this article is to contribute for the debate about the construction of governance spaces which guarantee the continuity of the regional development public policies, thus articulating actors and optimizing strategic projects in order to improve regional competitiveness and sustainability. The call by European Union policymakers for wider and more direct involvement in improving European governance is coupled with the increased usage of new information and communications technologies by public administrations across the EU. Portugal is involved in a catching-up process with high investments in the areas of innovation and ICT infrastructures, nonetheless governance remains a field of action that deserves further attention and discussion. Based on the analysis of the Portuguese Digital Cities and Regions Program, we argue that the interest in the “digital” has been constructed around a rather narrow set of empirical and theoretical issues concerning mainly to technological innovation, neglecting other strategic political areas, such as the politics of governance and state re-territorialization around the city-region, the technological and social innovation, the role of democracy and citizenship in city-regions politics, and tensions around social reproduction and sustainability across the city-regions. These questions will be analysed and discussed in the light of the Portuguese experience and some final considerations will be outlined concerning the weaknesses and strengths of digital cities and regions governance. The analytical work was based on observations in different Portuguese digital cities and regions with the ultimate goal of increasing regional competitiveness and cohesiveness